If you follow Boston's radio scene at all, you've heard about the gigantic coup WTKK scored by "stealing" local
Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr from WRKO, where Carr had done afternoon drive for many years. Adam Reilly also did a
good writeup about Carr's departure in the Boston Phoenix, and Dan Kennedy has a
good writeup about the decline of WRKO leading up to this.
Many other blogs are buzzing, too...I've done a little commenting here and there, but I have little to say about this myself here. On the surface, WRKO has screwed up
badly by not offering Carr a contract when they had the chance several months ago...and FM competitor WTKK has gone a long way to fill a gaping hole left by
Imus's departure followed by
Mike Barnicle's "retirement" from WTKK.
Of course, how much of a "screw up" this is depends a lot on what the future holds for WRKO's right-wing talk format. The current morning host,
ex-Speakah of da House Tom Finneran has always had potential but just isn't a good radio personality (
ed.note: not alone he isn't...if they'd give him a good sidekick to fulfill the "radio professional" role, Finneran would probably be pretty decent). There's the usual right-wing fare on the rest of the day, the strongest of which is probably
Rush Limbaugh, whom is a radio force nationwide but
I've heard Boston is his weakest market (not surprising).
Rush alone does not a viable commercial station make. And don't forget WTKK still has some holes in the schedule even with Howie,
and there's also WTTT nipping at the heels in the conservative-talker wars. So does this spell the end of WRKO's conservative-talk format?
If so, then letting Howie go might make a lot of sense, although the
threat of legal action against him, and
letting him keep doing his show, seem fairly odd no matter what. And I can easily see Rush migrating over to WTKK as well. The other shows can find homes here and there (probably on WTTT or perhaps WBIX depending on the show).
The wild card, of course, is the
Red Sox. This year marked the beginning of the
arrangement where most of the baseball games are carried on WRKO but previous home WEEI (which, like WRKO, is also owned by Entercom) remains where the sports-talk format lives. Most radio geeks have derided this as goofy at best, utterly stupid at worst...although Entercom has claimed there hasn't been much confusion for the listeners, and overall I suppose it adds up to (at least a little) more ratings since WEEI does pretty well all day, not just during the games.
But changing the format of WRKO
probably doesn't mean the Sox games will move back to WEEI; the conventional wisdom is that the Sox played hardball with insisting on this WEEI-WRKO split because they didn't like the criticism of the team during WEEI's regular talk programming. So whatever new format comes around has to work around the games. That rules out a lot of options.
Liberal-talk on WRKO has been bandied about quite a bit, even the return of
Air America Radio. But I don't see that happening; AAR still has budget problems which make it a risky option. And the last go-around of AAR on WXKS & WKOX was a miserable failure ratings-wise. You can blame that on the
lousy night signals and poor overall promotion (and you'd be right) but regardless, it was still a failure before and that makes it no less a risky proposition as staying with conservative talk. Plus I'm of the suspicion that, even though it's more centrist in its politics, the fans of liberal talk are already pretty happy with local
NPR offerings
WBUR and
WGBH.
Going way out into the realm of speculation, I wonder if Entercom is thinking
way outside the box and might just sell WRKO for a few tens of millions of dollars. Certainly it solves the programming problem, albeit by cutting the
Gordian Knot. But it would help offset the mucho dinero ($12mil per year for 10 years, IIRC) they're paying for the rights for Sox games, and it might essentially "force" the games back onto WEEI (which probably wouldn't be viewed as a bad thing by Entercom). Of course, selling off such a potentially valuable property as a radio station - especially one with WRKO's hefty signal - is rarely done and with good reason; when the Sox games were still on WEEI, Entercom made (I believe) about $35 million a year off of 850AM
alone. While that's an extreme example, a well-run, well-listened-to station can rake in at least $5-$10 million a year, so Entercom could potentially earn the same value as a sale in less than a decade. Hence why a sale is somewhat unlikely.
Although if it DID happen, it'd be nice to see it go to WUMB. Hint, hint! ;-) I'm mostly kidding, of course...I'm a pubradio nut so it would be pretty cool to see the folk format on a real hefty signal (even AM, since HD Radio can help overcome the audio fidelity issues of AM). But I doubt WUMB could afford it without ridiculously generous terms of sale.
Anyways...personally, I wonder if Entercom is going to follow Clear Channel's example and target the under-served ethnic populations in Boston. Word around the campfire is that WXKS & WKOX have brought in decent billing in a surprisingly short time with the Spanish-language "Rumba" format. And there are literally a dozen pirate stations airing Caribbean news and music (mostly Haitian) around Boston. Why not a Caribbean-creole/Haitian format? Or maybe copy
WJFD from New Bedford and put on Portuguese-language for all the Brazilian communities? It's comparatively cheap to do, and cheap to market (word of mouth is all you need), and obviously there's a market.
I guess time will tell!
So this week's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me was taped in Millennium Park in Chicago, and since I was visiting an old college friend, my wife and I decided to fly out early enough to catch the taping on Thursday night. We got there literally one minute before the show started - perfect timing! The pic to the left is the closest I could get to the front, from left to right is Carl Kasell, Peter Sagal, Roy Blount Jr, Roxanne Roberts and Adam Felber. Adam was in rare form this week, correctly answering eight questions during "Lightning Fill-In-The-Blank"...that's hard to do, but Adam's somewhat notorious for being a little too well-informed. :-)
However, I think I also made my claim to fame...at one point there was a listener caller from Boston. The chit-chat included a mention that the Chicago White Sox were playing the Boston Red Sox at Fenway that night, and I shouted "Go Sox!" (much to my wife's chagrin). It does sound vaguely like my shout made it on tape, although I was mighty far back on the lawn. Meh, even if it's not really me - I'll choose to believe it is. I'm a Red Sox fan...allow me my delusions... ;-)
P.S. We also got a very nice tour of Chicago Public Radio's facility on Navy Pier from Breeze Richardson on Friday; thanks Breeze! Some pics are posted here: there's the "WBEZ statue" out on the boardwalk of the Navy Pier (which CPR is located on). There's also this retro-looking "Remind-O-Timer" I spotted in one of the studios...I have no idea if it works, though. The hands were spinning but the time is wrong. Looks cool, though...all those curved marks around the perimeter are switches. And there's a pic Breeze took of myself and my wife in WBEZ's main mic studio, a very nice studio with lots of mics, high ceilings, and plenty of floor space to have bands perform during interview shows. There's also a separate performance studio (that I didn't take a pic of) that's even nicer.
I also stood not 10 feet from the back of Ira Glass's head while he was in town for a meeting. (Ira's based in NYC these days) My skin is still tingling. :-)
